Erdoğan’s former speechwriter: Call for Gülen’s return was tactical move


Date posted: August 26, 2016

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s former speechwriter and current Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputy Aydın Ünal wrote on Thursday that Erdoğan has never liked Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and that his call for Gülen to return to Turkey in 2012 was a political maneuver.

The admission came in Ünal’s Thursday column in pro-government daily Yeni Şafak in response to criticism that Erdoğan and his party had supported the grassroots social and educational movement inspired by the teachings of Turkish Islamic scholar Gülen.

“Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Necmettin Erbakan [former prime minister and leader of the political Islamist movement in Turkey] and the political movement that led to the AK Party’s birth have never liked Fethullah Gülen and never were in harmony with him,” Ünal wrote, a fact that is known to observers of religious movements in the country. Ünal, however, added that Erdoğan never trusted Gülen, either.

However, Erdoğan attended the 2012 Turkish Olympiads, the flagship event of the Gülen movement, and made a now infamous call to Gülen, who is in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Erdoğan called for an “end to Gülen’s longing” and asked him to return to his home country.

According to Ünal, this was never a sincere invitation. Calling people who applauded Erdoğan’s request in a standing ovation “thousands of idiots,” Ünal said that unlike that crowd, the people who saw the beginning of the antagonism that emerged between Erdoğan and Gülen realized that the invitation “cornered” Gülen. Ünal termed Erdoğan’s insincere call “a maneuver of political genius” while admitting Erdoğan’s hypocrisy.

Following the massive corruption investigations of 2013 that implicated Erdoğan’s family, Turkey’s then prime minister accused Gülen of plotting a coup against his government. Hours after Turkey’s foiled coup in July, Erdoğan also declared Gülen the mastermind of the coup plot despite the lack of credible evidence.

An even more extensive witch-hunt against Gülen sympathizers has been ongoing since July 15.

Source: Turkish Minute , August 25, 2016

Tags: | | | |


Related News

Tension at home hits Turkey’s brand overseas

ESİDEF President Mustafa Özkara said: “Top government officials, who during the Turkish Olympiads only six months ago called the Hizmet movement the ‘peace movement of the century,’ now define the same movement as a ‘parallel structure,’ a ‘gang,’ a ‘criminal organization’ and even Hashashins.

President Gul says debates over prep schools should not lead to ‘resentment’

Turkish President Abdullah Gül has said ongoing debates over a recent controversy over the government’s move to shut down prep schools should not lead to “resentment.” The government’s plan to ban private tutoring institutions that train students for high school and university entrance exams has divided society and led to fear among some segments of the public that socioeconomic differences may further affect students’ academic achievement after the closure.

Gülen speaks to Kurdish paper, renews his support for education in mother tongue

Well-known Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen has voiced strong support for education in one’s mother tongue, in reference to allowing the use of Kurdish in education in Turkey, and said basic human rights and freedoms could not be the object of any political bargaining as they are the natural rights of human beings. Speaking to […]

Test of Turkish society

Over the past 11 years, Turkey has been undergoing an important transformation. While it seems to defend secular and modern-looking Western lifestyles, it is trying to come out of the tangle of Kemalism, which is a regime disregarding democratic values of the West. Even if Kemalism had at first dreamed of establishing a real Western democracy, it was later defiled and turned into a hegemony of the elite.

Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet Movement by Ori Soltes, Georgetown University

Ori Z. Soltes talks in this video about Fethullah Gülen from sufi perspective. Ori Z. Soltes is Goldman Professorial Lecturer at Georgetown Univeristy where he teaches theology, philosophy and art history at the department of theology and he is former Director and Curator of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., where he curated over 80 exhibitions.

Gülen’s lawyer: Systemic, illegal wiretaps taking place in Turkey over last six months

After “lies” and “defamatory statements” about Gülen surfaced in the media once new recordings were leaked on the Internet, lawyer Nurullah Albayrak said in a written statement that Gülen’s phone calls had been illegally wiretapped.

Latest News

Turkish inmate jailed over alleged Gülen links dies of heart attack in prison

Message of Condemnation and Condolences for Mass Shooting at Bondi Beach, Sydney

Media executive Hidayet Karaca marks 11th year in prison over alleged links to Gülen movement

ECtHR faults Turkey for convictions of 2,420 applicants over Gülen links in follow-up to 2023 judgment

New Book Exposes Erdoğan’s “Civil Death Project” Targeting the Hizmet Movement

European Human Rights Treaty Faces Legal And Political Tests

ECtHR rejects Turkey’s appeal, clearing path for retrials in Gülen-linked cases

Erdoğan’s Civil Death Project’ : The ‘politicide’ spanning more than a decade

Fethullah Gülen’s Vision and the Purpose of Hizmet

In Case You Missed It

Deputy PM denies profiling of citizens in gov’t, private sector

Kimse Yok Mu gears up to assist Malian refugees

Food and fun abound at Turkish Festival

34 housewives arrested over Gülen links in İstanbul

Will Gülen movement become a political party?

Foreign Minister Babacan visits Turkish school in Dakar

Purge-victim family drowns in the Aegean Sea off Turkey

Copyright 2026 Hizmet News